Homemade and hand-me-downs were the clothes of my
youth, with the occasional new item from Sears. I never thought about it much
until high school, where other girls (the cool ones, anyway) exulted in
Villager dresses and Bobbie Brooks suits. Or was it the other way round? Didn’t
matter. We couldn’t afford either one.
I made my
own wedding dress. When my husband started working for a company that staged big
fund-raising banquets, I made a slinky blue nylon halter dress that held its
own pretty well with the gowns for which the wealthy flew to Atlanta.
Now a
grandmother, having retired all the giant tee shirts and homemade maternity
pants and having husbanded our income to a comfortable depth, I could probably
afford any clothing that strikes my fancy. But the expensive designer outfits
are striking something else.
The last
high-end mall fashion magazine that crept into our mailbox was filled with
models who looked like heroin addicts draped in rags. The latest came with a
New York newspaper. New York City! World fashion capital! Well—the models look
a bit less desiccated, though we suspect a couple of the women might be men.
Facial expressions range from misery to a sort of hostile desperation. Didn’t models used to smile? Like they were happy to wear the lovely clothes? But the desolate faces go with the clothes. “You’d have to pay me to wear that stuff,” was my first thought. On further consideration, “You couldn’t pay me to wear that stuff.” Aside from the realization that many models appear to have forgotten their undershirts, the outfits scream, “I started with tacky and carried it to a new dimension.”
This is from Chanel. Chanel! They've gone from Coco to Coocoo.
When Mrs. Harris went to Paris, she wound up with a gorgeous, flattering gown. That was close to the year I was born. I'd like to buy something gorgeous, but I guess it's not happening in my lifetime. They may have to bury me in something homemade. I do have some extra fabric somewhere.
